~ The metered movement of a fluttering heart

Italic Commutes

I’m streaking to work, not nude, but feeling a bit chilled from the wind’s tickling fingers. They’re crawling through the cracks in this spacesuit and offering a cold scarf to wrap around the softer joints. My knees might refresh to think of it snaking down to their aches, a relief for the bent position of a poor horseman. I’ve got my head into the breach, screened but feeling the push and rush offset from standing traffic. I imagine it’d be like knives to these eyes if I only lifted the glass for an instant; I can hear the grit scrape and grate as I drive past the wash from sputtering trucks.

If these toes left lines, how straight am I making it to my end? I know the old birds don’t have to twist and jive between curb and corner to make it home, but I’m doing my best to sink deeply into a design that keeps me steady. I’ve watched them waver with the vertical, be tossed by the currents at a slight indent to the east. I’m dealing with the same, no curves of costume to keep that slapping breath coursing around and not just against my form. I’ve hit an angle to help and all it’s doing is cutting through the cloth and introducing strain to a back log of broken bends.

The clear air helps at a stop, something for the senses to fill in when there’s no curls in the margins. That blue is taking a shift to white, ink running dry by the mid-morning commute in. It makes the glossing easier; daydreams for clouds we can no longer see, camouflaged by a creeping sun and receding sky. I’d leave my notes for later and I didn’t have a signature that was sensible for this kind of work, just a scrawl of whirls and loops like I wasn’t sure where I was headed. The morning was always this way, rushed and lazy.